Woolpert

Jon Gustafson is an executive strategist and innovator with over 20 years of experience integrating infrastructure technology solutions and enriched processes across business lines. He builds, leads, and empowers high-performing teams to anticipate trends and execute with agility. Having served as both a civil servant and private practitioner, he brings a unique perspective to deliver meaningful outcomes that create value and positively impact business operations. Presently Jon works as the Director of Artificial Intelligence for Woolpert where he leads a center of excellence dedicated to scaling and enabling industrial-grade artificial intelligence (AI) systems across business sectors and geographies. These efforts strive to enrich Woolpert's industry leadership, culture of innovation, and high-performing ethos.

What are some of the challenges impacting AI space?

Regarding AI, people generally have two schools of thought: either they are enthusiastic about the technology's potential to enhance productivity and decision-making or fear the disruption it could cause to their daily lives. AI has the ability torevolutionize different industries and improve our lives, however, there are legitimate concerns regarding its impact on environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) areas. Thus, establishing AI's credibility is one of the greatest challenges facing its continued advancement and acceptance across industries.

Incorporating transparency, ethics, and safety criteria into the development of AI systems is crucial for fostering confidence and trust in these technologies. By doing so, we can utilize the power of AI to address some of the world's most important issues while minimizing the risks involved.

What are some of the latest trends in AI space?

Currently, there is a great deal of interest in generative AI such as the recently released GPT-4 model by Open AI, which enables users to get detailed information and insights rapidly through a generic prompt. This enthusiasm surrounding AI is likely to remain throughout the year, but I anticipate that AI will prove its value in many other areas (e.g. natural language processing, computer vision, etc.) and will lead to an increase in the operationalization of AI systems across many industries. Given Microsoft's relationship with Open AI, we will soon leverage generative AI in our daily productivity tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, among others. This will provide consumers with simple access to the power and capabilities of these systems, making their daily use easier.

However, in our industry, the application of AI is not only going to be essential for enhancing productivity and unlocking deeper insights from massive amounts of data across the project delivery lifecycle, but also for protecting the public health, safety, and welfare. Licensed professionals such as architects, engineers, and land surveyors have the ethical responsibility to ensure their decisions safeguard the public's interests. AI technology can assist these professionals with making data-driven decisions that enable automation and conditional autonomy for specific tasks such as generative design, which iteratively optimizes project designs for specific locations or corridors. The effective use of AI by these professionals will require ‘unboxing the blackbox’ so they can have confidence in the results produced by AI systems, which can be achieved, at least in part, by implementing responsible AI practices. I believe that many businesses in our industry see the potential and benefits of AI and are going beyond proof of concept to operationalize AI solutions before the end of this year. This will aid in enhancing the decision-making processes and optimizingESG-related impacts, resulting in better outcomes for the general public.

 ​For professionals in any field it is very important to cultivate a growth mentality 

What are some of your recent project initiatives?

Woolpert is a premier architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm that gathers a ton of data from a variety of sources, such as our homegrown digital products, in-situ sensors, partner-owned satellites, and vast array of terrestrial, hydrographic, and aerial remote sensing systems. Traditionally, we analyze and extract required information from this large volume of data using conventional procedures that made heavy use of manual labor. However, Woolpert is now utilizing AI techniques to automate many of these tasks in order to prevent human error and fatigue while improving efficiency and productivity. Due to this, there has been some early success in automatically extracting features from geospatial data and forecasting environmental conditions using custom-built models. In addition, new types of reinforcement learningapplications are being investigated using the same types of data.

How do you envision the future of the space?

The future of AI will be fit for purpose depending on the aspirations of each company and their respective business strategies. In order to compete in the future marketplace, many traditional businesses and consulting organizations will need to invest in AI skills and/or partnerships. However, to remain competitive, firms must understand how AI fits within their domain and how it solves their customers' problems. Soon, it will be difficult to find a company that is not leveraging AI to deliver value.

In terms of technology, hardware and computing capacity are important to the development of AI, so I expect some significant advancements in coming years. For instance, the combination of quantum computing with more mature AI frameworks and a growing AI community can unleash significant power for companies that have adopted an AI strategy. Quantum computing has the potential to significantly increase computing power, which could facilitate more complicated AI algorithms and workflows. Further, I believe AI will contribute heavily to the discovery of new technologies – a sort of machine learning paradox.

With the increased competition in the AI market, it is expected that new business models will rise, existing tools will become smarter, and businesses will see significant returns from their investments in AI technologies and skills to maintain their competitive edge. Consequently, we anticipate profound AI developments and discoveries over the next year and beyond.It is also important to point out that regulations and legal frameworks are coming soon to mitigate some significant risks, but I hope these will not stifle the innovation that has led many organizations to successfully adopt AI.

What would be your piece of advice for budding professionals in the field?

For professionals in any field it is very important to cultivate a growth mentality. Embrace setbacks and challenges as learning and development opportunities, and seek input from mentors and peers in order to continuously enhance your skills and knowledge. Also, acquire good communication and cooperation skills, as success in any sector typically depends on working well with others. Finally, maintain adaptability and flexibility in the face of changing conditions, as industries and technology are prone to rapid evolution.